New Star Trek Site: Experience The Enterprise

Paramount has added a new website to their online marketing mix, an ‘augmented reality’ application called Experience The Enterprise. By printing off an image or downloading it to your iPhone you can create an interactive 3D virtual reality tour of the new USS Enterprise, check out a demo video below.

Experience The Enterprise
Using your webcam experience-the-enterprise.com gives you the opportunity to take an extensive five minute tour of the Enterprise, including testing the ship’s weapons systems, impulse engines and warp drive. Here is a demo.

‘Experience The Enterprise’ is built using augmented reality (AR) technology, which combines real world and computer-generated data to bring a 3D interactive version of the Starship Enterprise to life, on your desktop or in the palm of your hand.

Anybody with a webcam can take a tour of the Enterprise using the kind of futuristic technology that sits at the heart of perhaps the most popular science-fiction franchise of all time. Once underway, you are given a ‘cadet holo-simulation’ by Starfleet, the Academy in which new recruits Kirk, Spock and McCoy are enrolled at the start of the new film.

This is the first time AR has been used to bring a major film release to life in this way. The application itself was constructed using the original 3D model of the Enterprise appearing in the film, as well as featuring an array of special effects direct from the production. It was developed for PPI by creative marketing agency Picture Production Company (PPC), working in conjunction with augmented reality specialists Total Immersion.

Here are a couple of images of the site in action sent over by Paramount:

On a side note (not sure if Anthony mentioned it in an update) Sci-Fi is running a Trek marathon on Thursday. …I guess it’s either supposed to get you amped up for the new movie or make you wish these were the glory days of old, who knows. Either way, it’s more Trek and it’ll give me something to watch before I see the 7pm showing that night.

#24 Judging from the size of the shuttlebay seen in the movie clip released the engineering hull actually looks like it may be a bit smaller than the original series, so it’s dimensions can’t be that much bigger than the original Enterprise.

If the ship really is 2500 feet in length, that would make it as long or longer than the Enterprise-D. The classic Enterprise is about 1000 feet (roughly the same as an aircraft carrier), and Roddenberry wanted the Enterprise-D to be twice as long. That seems just odd to increase the ship size so significantly, so let’s hope the information is plain wrong. (Though it would explain why the nacelles are so honking big!)

Do Kurtzman and/or Orci ever wander around in here anymore? Could they clear this up, perhaps?

This program works just as seen in the video above. You DO NOT have to have a color printer for this to work. Unlike similar programs the trigger is not color, but is intead shape alone. It will sense the shape on the greyscale image and show images, video, and most amazingly of all…a 3D model of the Enterprise! Turn the paper around slowly as quick movements confuse it. Also, some angles will make the program reset. If you want to reset the view on purpose than just shake the paper and it will reset. I am quite impressed, actually. This works like a charm! ^_^ I love it! Great for kiddies and adults to play with! The only con to this is that you need to have a webcam, of course, and that the load-times are rather long. On high-speed wireless it took me 20 minutes to load this up, but boy, was it worth it! Really, all modem users can do is cross your fingers and wait. Seeing as information is stored on the computer, the first load time will be the longest. After that it will be A LOT less as the needed info is already temporarily stored. As far as cameras go, the better quality camera, the better the program will work as it needs to be able to ‘see’ good to sense the paper. Built-in cameras seem to work better for some reason. P.S. The active X control is clean, I scanned it. I see… Read more »

#28 – the series U.S.S. Enterprise was 11 (cramped) decks thick in the 417-foot wide Saucer, with a Secondary hull about 340 feet long, and engines that were 512 feet long. The total length of the series U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 is 947 feet long.

I for one always thought they should have made the ship much bigger, if only because the turbolift decks going by can go on for nearly as many decks on TV as what was featured somewhere in Star Trek 5 – 78 decks.

Star Trek’s shape was originally designed – per Matt Jefferies, to be about 200 feet long, and that would have been fine for Pike’s crew of whatever it was in “The Cage” – if everyone but Pike slept in a common large berthing space the way they do on today’s submarines, surface ships, or international space stations. The larger size was chosen when it was decided the crew would house 430 people, and junior officers would have to be bunked up. But even then, we find that most of the ship contains crew quarters.

I do hope that something in the script explains HOW the Enterprise goes from “our” 947-foot long starship and the much larger (and much more sensible) size of the “alternate new reality” version of the Enterprise. The big question would be simply this … does the “change” in time occur before “our” April’s Enterprise is built, or after J.J.’s “Pike’s Enterprise” is built?

#32 – yes that is THE Rick Sternbach, who designed the USS Voyager and designed it to work just fine. I always tested out Starship designs by dropping the models from 6 feet altitude, and Voyager was the only one that didn’t splinter like warping a ship right into an Asteroid.

… actually I could care less about the ship. I already hate it. I long for the days of Remixed Cage where I could see the glue and tape in detail in the sets, and a model that stands in the Smithsonian as THE Star Trek Enterprise.

So, I guess my question is … anyone know when we can expect Alan Dean Foster’s novel on the shelves? Might just read it, imagine I’m watching the real ship, and skip the film.

35. John Sullivan – “I do hope that something in the script explains HOW the Enterprise goes from “our” 947-foot long starship and the much larger (and much more sensible) size of the “alternate new reality” version of the Enterprise. The big question would be simply this … does the “change” in time occur before “our” April’s Enterprise is built, or after J.J.’s “Pike’s Enterprise” is built?”

43 it is not worth it! Lets face it this movie will be action packed and exciting, how ever everything is changing and they are throwing everything that came before out! The Edselprise is just ridiculous in every aspect! I mean come on engineering shot on location in some refinery. The hanger bay shot in a airship hanger. Lets not even talk about that bridge anymore! The art direction just sucks in this film! I will see it probably twice, and I hope i can enjoy it. If Gene Roddenberry had a grave he would be rolling over in it! Thank God he and his wife will be up in space sometime in the next year or so. Star treks on screen appearance has always been its signature, but the production design on this project is just way off base! What were they thinking! Surely the story will be good! Some Trek fans I have found out over the years will except anything and just love it. I have another opinionand I am sticking to it. Oh but wait this is Trek for everyone ,I hope so!

Interesting idea, but the execution is just awkward. Let’s see: hold an iPhone image (or color printout) in front of your web cam and, thus, directly in front of the browser window you’re trying to view. Any movement starts the simulation over again. Quite annoying, actually. I got so frustrated with it after 5 minutes I had to stop.

You don’t hold it right up to it (in fact it tells you NOT too) and it will still read the image as long as it can see it. I had the lights down and it would turn off as I turned it and the image got too dark. I turned on the lights and it was fine. It’s actually quite fun at the end when you get to fire phasers and photons and engage warp speed at will.